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A Words of the Ancients Design Team listWhere we are differing is in the opinion of whether budgeting for more man-power to be shifted to PFS scenario development is justified.
Oh we're not differing in opinion there. I believe PFS needs it's own development, and editorial team*, in addition to an assistant campaign coordinator.
This is likely just 1 more person on each team who focus on PFS primarily, and assist in "major" releases as time allows. If everyone currently on the editorial team is overworked and can't be properly spared to work on PFS scenario's hiring additional people is needed.
I think the only difference of opinion we have is how quickly we expect to see the changes. One of my friends owns a manufacturer of card sleeves (legion supplies) through that I have learned that the end product of hiring new people REALLY isn't seen for 5-6 months after they are integrated when significantly more products finally make it to distribution.
Some things have been noticeable in season 4 however, editing HAS been better, significantly fewer typos, better grammar ect.
Art improvements have been noticeable, I'll occasionally stop to look at the art, something that hasn't happened in previous season.
This is what I think, the Player's and Organizer's want, I'm going to put them has higher/lower priority, because I am trying to be a realist :). Feel free to add to the list or argue my priorities.
Highest Priority: more Scenario's / month. 1 a week is a reasonable amount of dedicated players to play and, in my opinion, weekly events should be the aspiration of this type of campaign.
High Priority: Promote GMing, The campaign needs more GMs to grow, there are people who just love to GM are out there, but we need to entice people who love to play to take up the mantle of GM occasionally as well.
Keeping up to date on sanctioning new material as it comes out, including adventure paths and modules.
Low Priority: Sanctioning older Adventure Paths.
This list is not comprehensive, and is entirely my opinion, and based on what I have been reading on these forums.
Edit: I love making words plural for no reason, apparently.
Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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Oh we're not differing in opinion there. I believe PFS needs it's own development, and editorial team*, in addition to an assistant campaign coordinator.A Words of the Ancients Design Team listWhere we are differing is in the opinion of whether budgeting for more man-power to be shifted to PFS scenario development is justified.
Nope, you and I are not arguing.
Erik Mona and I are. Well, not arguing, I guess. We just don't agree on the priority that more support for PFS (in general) deserves. He thinks I'm being unreasonable, and I think he's being unsupportive to my favorite campaign.
I also agree with you that it takes time to see these things through and for any changes to have an impact. That's why I am being so "unreasonable" fully a year ahead of the next major thing Paizo and PFS will have to contend with. I want them to change NOW, so that the changes can be realized in time to be ahead, rather than having to react and wait while they are catching up.
Out of curiosity, what store do you own, and where?
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Oh we're not differing in opinion there. I believe PFS needs it's own development, and editorial team*, in addition to an assistant campaign coordinator.A Words of the Ancients Design Team listWhere we are differing is in the opinion of whether budgeting for more man-power to be shifted to PFS scenario development is justified.
Nope, you and I are not arguing.
Erik Mona and I are. Well, not arguing, I guess. We just don't agree on the priority that more support for PFS (in general) deserves. He thinks I'm being unreasonable, and I think he's being unsupportive to my favorite campaign.
I also agree with you that it takes time to see these things through and for any changes to have an impact. That's why I am being so "unreasonable" fully a year ahead of the next major thing Paizo and PFS will have to contend with. I want them to change NOW, so that the changes can be realized in time to be ahead, rather than having to react and wait while they are catching up.
** spoiler omitted **
Ah that makes sense.
Misty Mountain Games - Madison, Wi
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For what it matters, I would love to see one tournament style event at Gen Con by Paizo, in the same vein as the D&D Championship every year. Competition is fun, and as long as it isnt the main stay I think people would have a grand ole time of it.Yes it was. And by and large, we received an overwhelmingly negative response because people advised they would rather have a game they worked together with instead of a game they competed against each other. We are not planning another tournament style event for the foreseeable future, and instead focusing future efforts on cooperative game play, such as this year's special.Isn't that how Runecarved worked? I thought the goblin boons went to the high score teams/GMs.This idea just popped in my head because I was thinking about GenCon and how Drogon has not gone yet.
What about a tournament based around PFS to be run at Cons? The idea is like the old school Goodman Games Tournies.
-Build a 6 person team of level 1 characters.
-Everyone runs through a new scenario and is graded (points for knowledge checks, finding certain items, etc and negative points for failures, deaths, etc).
-Each team is scored and only x number of teams move on.
-If your team moves on you get to progress your character to some new level for the next round. If your team does not progress you get credit for the scenario played.
-Repeat the next round with a new scenario. Run as many rounds as needed to eliminate all but 1 team.
-Winning team ends at level 12 with some door prizes, a lvl 12 character, and some cool boon.I admit to being surprised that the tournament style was received negatively. I, too, would expect that people would want to be able to play something like that.
SoA is likely correct: have a tournament, but make that the reason for the event, not just a part of the event. For instance, in Season Three, if there...
There were several things wrong with Runecarved Key that could have been most easily fixed by making it not a tournament style. Patrick nailed the issue with table variation--since the scenario was full to bursting with material for the time allotted, it meant that if you have a fast GM who has mastered the material, you're scoring more points than if you have a slow GM, even for exactly the same players. To make matters worse, if you have a GM who is very descriptive and really gets you into the RP, for instance asking for what tact you would take with each Diplomacy check, you're in big trouble compared to the table with the GM who just says "Roll Diplomacy. Oh you got 40? You convinced him, on to the next part." If you, as a player, tell the GM "can it with the descriptive text, we're on a timer here!" then it's extremely rude, but if you don't, you are losing key points compared to the other tables and there's literally nothing you can do about it, no matter how solid your team is. There's more, but I don't want to derail this thread. I'm happy to PM or start a new thread if anyone's interested in hearing why I heard a lot of negative feedback on RftRK even though Kyle and Tim wrote a scenario full of amazing stuff that deserved better reviews if it hadn't been a tournament style.
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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There were several things wrong with Runecarved Key that could have been most easily fixed by making it not a tournament style. Patrick nailed the issue with table variation--since the scenario was full to bursting with material for the time allotted, it meant that if you have a fast GM who has mastered the material, you're scoring more points than if you have a slow GM, even for exactly the same players. To make matters worse, if you have a GM who is very descriptive and really gets you into the RP, for instance asking for what tact you would take with each Diplomacy check, you're in big trouble compared to the table with the GM who just says "Roll Diplomacy. Oh you got 40? You convinced him, on to the next part." If you, as a player, tell the GM "can it with the descriptive text, we're on a timer here!" then it's extremely rude, but if you don't, you are losing key points compared to the other tables and there's literally nothing you can do about it, no matter how solid your team is. There's more, but I don't want to derail this thread. I'm happy to PM or start a new thread if anyone's interested in hearing why I heard a lot of negative feedback on RftRK even though Kyle and Tim wrote a scenario full of amazing stuff that deserved better reviews if it hadn't been a tournament style.
This thread's about improving PFS's position in the world of organized play. I don't think you'd be derailing, if you listed the feedback you'd heard in a context that you could then use to list improvements.
Lay it out.
Edit: If I were worried about derailing things, I'd have not posted my own observations about the cost of various editions. /-:
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There were several things wrong with Runecarved Key that could have been most easily fixed by making it not a tournament style. Patrick nailed the issue with table variation--since the scenario was full to bursting with material for the time allotted, it meant that if you have a fast GM who has mastered the material, you're scoring more points than if you have a slow GM, even for exactly the same players. To make matters worse, if you have a GM who is very descriptive and really gets you into the RP, for instance asking for what tact you would take with each Diplomacy check, you're in big trouble compared to the table with the GM who just says "Roll Diplomacy. Oh you got 40? You convinced him, on to the next part." If you, as a player, tell the GM "can it with the descriptive text, we're on a timer here!" then it's extremely rude, but if you don't, you are losing key points compared to the other tables and there's literally nothing you can do about it, no matter how solid your team is. There's more, but I don't want to derail this thread. I'm happy to PM or start a new thread if anyone's interested in hearing why I heard a lot of negative feedback on RftRK even though Kyle and Tim wrote a scenario full of amazing stuff that deserved better reviews if it hadn't been a tournament style.
This is interesting to me because I wasn't there, so I'm curious about it; it's also relevant because it's the sort of information that can be used by campaign leadership to make improvements going forward. So I say go for it. :D
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I don't think it will be Living Greyhawk in a new D&D Next incarnation. The reason it was LG in the start was because Greyhawk was the defined 'default' setting for 3.0 and then 3.5
The powers that be were trying to sell more DMGs/PHBS and with the PHB covering Pelor etc , that meant that the organised campaign setting would always be Greyhawk.
This change with 4e and the fact that Forgotten Realms was now the default (even if the PHB did have some Gods in it that did not seem FR at all). Thus you have the Living Forgotten Realms.
One of the things I both loved and loathed about Living Greyhawk was the physical world tied to countries within Greyhawk. Ie Australia was Perrenland. While this gave the setting real flavor it effectively dissuaded some (as obviously the American player base was given a far wider selection of scenarios). However the amount of scenarios out there was .. staggering. Even today for homebrew games I declare raids on old scenarios for ideas... it is a huge wealth of material. (However trying to read an italian scenario... not likely :) )
With the arrival of Neverwinter (mmo), I firmly think that Living FR (if it still exists) will likely be reborn for D&D next as the default setting. It isn't that which is the main problem for me, It is the fact that sadly the rules dictate the setting and not the other way around.
However, now that I have a quick read of what I have just typed. I am not entirely convinced that there will be another WOTC living campaign. LG started at the cusp of a new system too, yet it was a time where not everyone was facebooking, or twittering or spent weekends playing a character in an mmo. There were no Iphones? and the sense of Social media while there is not as cloting as it feels like today. Next currently has its delves and other similar events which do promote itself (or not if you have a bad experience).
I will be very interested Drogon to see how things pan out, I do hope there is a new LFR or 'other' living campaign arise.
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There were several things wrong with Runecarved Key that could have been most easily fixed by making it not a tournament style. Patrick nailed the issue with table variation--since the scenario was full to bursting with material for the time allotted, it meant that if you have a fast GM who has mastered the material, you're scoring more points than if you have a slow GM, even for exactly the same players. To make matters worse, if you have a GM who is very descriptive and really gets you into the RP, for instance asking for what tact you would take with each Diplomacy check, you're in big trouble compared to the table with the GM who just says "Roll Diplomacy. Oh you got 40? You convinced him, on to the next part." If you, as a player, tell the GM "can it with the descriptive text, we're on a timer here!" then it's extremely rude, but if you don't, you are losing key points compared to the other tables and there's literally nothing you can do about it, no matter how solid your team is. There's more, but I don't want to derail this thread. I'm happy to PM or start a new thread if anyone's interested in hearing why I heard a lot of negative feedback on RftRK even though Kyle and Tim wrote a scenario full of amazing stuff that deserved better reviews if it hadn't been a tournament style.This thread's about improving PFS's position in the world of organized play. I don't think you'd be derailing, if you listed the feedback you'd heard in a context that you could then use to list improvements.
Lay it out.
Edit: If I were worried about derailing things, I'd have not posted my own observations about the cost of various editions. /-:
Sure. Well let's talk about how my gf and I learned a lot from Gencon's Runecarved Key, leading her to overseer it later at Totalcon in an experience I consider to have been superior for the players involved overall compared to the Gencon version. Note that spoilers for the scenario abound here, so just stop reading if you don't want spoilers for Runecarved Key:
Right off the bat, one problem with the scenario is that the missions were often shady or even outright evil in their presentation. So, in a normal scenario that's not a bad thing! Coming up with a clever solution that allays moral issues the party members might have or roleplaying in-character to help come to a decision about whether to do such a questionable mission can be amazingly fun things to do. If it was a cooperative special, you could even have paladins and the like choose to step out of certain of these missions and go do something minor to interact with another table. But with a competitive special with huge time pressure, you are penalized if you do any of this. You're penalized if the paladin sits out. You're penalized if the paladin wants to discuss the mission with you and have a wonderfully-roleplayed in-character discussion that showcases the paladin's Shelynite kindness as played-off of your River Kingdoms rogue's devil-may-care attitude. During that time, everybody else got key points. You're penalized if you try to come up with a creative solution because even if you have a great well-prepared GM who rolls with it, throwing the GM a curveball will take her some time to think (and presumably it took you time to think it up too). And if your GM isn't in the mood for creative solutions, your table variation nails you here.
So OK, that's a start on why the moral ambiguity mixed badly with the tournament style while either alone would not have been as bad.
Next we come to the auction. The way GMs handled this varied hugely. They give you all these awesome roleplaying notes for each of the guests and how they would interact with you. Some GMs played those up to give the players a great roleplaying experience with those NPCs. Others just asked for Diplomacy checks. So what do you do if one of the players actually has insanely high Knowledge here and tries to call off a string of 40+ results on every NPC. This isn't a hypothetical either. I heard of some GMs who gave the PCs all the information right away, which was a big leg up in key points. But of course, you're robbing the players of essentially the entire RP scene and you're only really spotlighting that one player, whereas doing all the scenes could let everyone shine. I happened to be bringing a Knowledge-monkey when I played at Gencon, and our GM chose to showcase the fun RP and let everyone shine, so we wound up only talking to a few people, and we lost a bunch of key points compared to if we just got all the info on the knowledge checks boringly.
Other issues included the assignment of key points in arbitrary ways. For example, there's one mission where you are trying to blackmail a noblewoman. The adventure flat out tells you that one of your choices is to hire charlatans to spread lies about her and another is to forge false evidence. Our group found real evidence, presented it to her and nailed the Intimidate check to scare her off. The GM asked if we wanted to do the other two things and we said "That would be counterproductive! If we forge fake evidence and it gets found out as fake, then that gives the people we're blackmailing a foothold to attempt to claim that the whole thing is forged." And the scenario gave you more points if you forged the fake evidence too. This scheme continued to be unpredictable and capriciously contradictory at every turn. After being burned several times with well-performed highly-successful direct confrontations that made us lose points because we didn't sneak in without anyone seeing us, we performed a perfect stealth against a different miniquest, completely fulfilling our mission of determining how much money the Duchesses had to spend and where it was, but we lost points for not getting the guy at the house (who we sneaked past) to admit that he had guests.
So I'm talking about sneaking a lot, and how you can get points if no one ever notices you in a lot of places. This ties back to the "Do you give the Knowledge monkey an auto-win or let everyone play" question from the player's perspective--at Gencon, we quickly learned that making a plan that lets everyone play was destroying our key points, so we started concocting plans that only involved an invisible stealthing character while the rest of us sat around. These gave us our best key points and the quickest too, by far. From a design perspective, thus was not good though for a PFS scenario, since it meant all the armored characters got to sit around.
In the latter portion with the ambush after the auction, a small sidebar tells the GM to urge the players to chase after the assassin immediately. Without that urging (or if the urging isn't vociferous enough), there is no way to possibly suspect that the wizards in the chapel will randomly stop chasing you and effectively vanish from existence if you leave (rather than combining two encounters). Our GM (who was absolutely fantastic) did not make a big deal about the fact that we should leave, and so we fought off those guys first. Since the enemies' crowd control attacks took a very long time to adjudicate out of character, even though we didn't spend that many in-character rounds to win the fight, we ran out of time before we could even face the waves of enemies (time was called just as we finished the chase). We were in peak condition and could have easily taken all three waves by my estimation, which were worth vast amounts of key points (the assassin and the waves were worth 55 of them out of 150 max). So this one small thing (encouraging the PCs to counterintuitively ignore the spellcasters and leave, as the scenario recommends, even though realistically they would then have those guys breathing down their necks with summoned creatures) is a guaranteed make-or-break taking time into account.
Okay, so I led you with a promise of how we made it better without really mentioning it at all until now. It was very easy--we downplayed the competition between tables. We still told people how many points they were getting and vaguely alluded to the fact that more points would help them beat the Aspis Consortium and other rivals. That way they didn't stress out over the points, and they felt comfortable sharing interactions with other tables when the Pathfinders were together (like in the cathedral). So essentially, we removed the tournament part. And I think people had more fun for it. My table of 12+ had so many great and hilarious moments especially when they were failing a side mission with style and great RP (trust me, these guys knew how to fail a side mission with style and great RP, and they made huge successes on others). But I'm sure they would have had a stronger undercurrent of frustration if it was a tournament. Now granted, we had the luxury of not having a huge prize to give (like the goblin boon). Also our awesome VC got the game a much longer slot, and since we already decided we weren't emphasizing a race to see who could finish in time, we could fit more fun stuff in for everyone.
I guess the condensed version is--in any tournament where time is an issue (so pretty much all tournaments that score points on accomplishments and not on the GM giving the table a rating) you wind up rewarding things you don't want to see in PFS (like tables that have a GM that short-shrifts RP and skips to a single roll, etc) and RftRK in particular rewarded other behavior like just using the sneaky character over and over again while everyone else sat out, which is bad for PFS. Moral ambiguity in the scenario caused big issues as well not in the least because it was a tournament, which encouraged the paladin to shut up and go with it and rewarded tables with GMs who would look the other way over paladin's codes. These reasons are why you see bad reviews if you look up the scenario, even though the ideas for encounters in RftRK are innovative and cool and Tim and Kyle put together the best Special yet from a craftmanship perspective. Because in real play, there's nothing that beats the camaraderie from something like the silly gate challenge in YotSL (our venue had literally all the Pathfinders form a human chain both in and out of character to all use the high level Conjurer's spell-like ability to dimension hop across) where everyone is working together, the high-level people can feel awesome and helpful, the low levels can feel happy but also like they want to play more PFS to be as awesome as that guy, and everyone can feel "Timmy" (I know at least Drogon will get what I mean by that, but it's basically a player type that encompasses the vast majority of players of most games which is based on excitement and big flashy stuff--it was originally created by MtG terminologists).
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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I would like to play a tournament not based on time somehow.
Making it time based seems like the key mistake here
Having read through Rogue Eidolon's post (thank you for that analysis, by the way), I agree with what CWheezy says.
I think there is a place for tournament scenarios. I hear people talk about the "old days" at GenCon with tournament modules like the Against the Slave Lords series very fondly, so I can't imagine that a proper method of delivery can't be found.
I still think the Bonekeep series should be focused on that idea, instead of simply being "The Super Dangerous Series."
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Sure. Well let's talk about how my gf and I learned a lot from Gencon's Runecarved Key, leading her to overseer it later at Totalcon in an experience I consider to have been superior for the players involved overall compared to the Gencon version. Note that spoilers for the scenario abound here, so just stop reading if you don't want spoilers for Runecarved Key:
Spoiler:
Thank you. That's really cool.
It seems like the big thing is the time. So maybe in order to do a PFS tournament "properly" you need to split it up over multiple slots, so that one party can take time to do all the RP while another just cruises through it, and nobody's penalized.
Better standardization of scoring for various actions seems like a pretty important aspect too.
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Sure. Well let's talk about how my gf and I learned a lot from Gencon's Runecarved Key, leading her to overseer it later at Totalcon in an experience I consider to have been superior for the players involved overall compared to the Gencon version. Note that spoilers for the scenario abound here, so just stop reading if you don't want spoilers for Runecarved Key:
Spoiler:
Thank you. That's really cool.
It seems like the big thing is the time. So maybe in order to do a PFS tournament "properly" you need to split it up over multiple slots, so that one party can take time to do all the RP while another just cruises through it, and nobody's penalized.
Better standardization of scoring for various actions seems like a pretty important aspect too.
There can be some issues there as well--the people who finish early don't get as much game for their tickets, for one thing, and would have been unable to schedule something else for that second slot. I do agree that a time crunch makes matters worse, but I think Runecarved Key would still have been better as non-competitive even without the time crunch.
I happen to have also been in the 2011 Paizocon Grand Melee, which essentially didn't have a time limit, and our table was told we were vastly in the lead but that there was one table still playing; however, since winning in a low number of rounds was rewarded, it was expected we would still be on top. It was the last slot of the day, but eventually, the last table finished maybe two hours after everyone else was done, and they came in with the highest score. How is that possible? We had also been told that holding the center square was good to do, but what nobody realized is that holding the center square for one round was made valuable enough to cancel out all penalties for taking one round longer to fight. Given that things like rolling maximum weapon damage gave points (I guess the best character to have on your team would be a Small sized two-weapon fighter wielding unarmed strikes or the like, since on 1d2 there's a 50/50 chance of getting max damage), this inherently meant that for any two groups that held the center square constantly, and assuming you beat all waves and didn't tap out, the longer you took, the more you would score, since you would do more of the things that gave points that way.
Point systems are very tricky things. In Runecarved Key, for instance,
Maybe one way to do it would be to tell the players what the point criteria are. It takes a lot of the mystery out of it, but at the least it makes it feel less arbitrary. I know for sure that people would have played it differently in the Grand Melee if they knew that holding the center cancelled out the penalty for taking more rounds, therefore encouraging you to play with your kills if you want to win.
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I played in a Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classic in 2007. Those tournaments where excellent. That year the first round started as lvl 0 commoners.
Instead of placing a bunch of random people at a table, you signed up as a team with a pre-built squad of adventurers (Though some people where put together to make a table by the organizers). The tournament was timed but your score was not effected by time. You received points for how far you got, skill checks made, secrets found, etc. And you lost points for finishing with low HP, dieing, making bad decisions, etc. If a team raced through the adventure they may have gotten a low score because they missed stuff, where as a team that took their time may not have fully finished but they scored a lot more points along the way.
I think a tournament in PFS can be done right but it can't be the only event at Gencon. It needs to be in addition to the typical special because some people will not like the competitiveness of a tournament. You don't need to make a new scenario just for the tournament either. You could take new pathfinder scenarios that are released at Gencon and create a scoring system that promoted good Pathfinding (explore, report, cooperate) and punished bad Pathfinding (rushing, killing without thought, morally ambiguous acts that leave the Society in a bad light, etc). Similar to the secret scoring system in that retirement arc we all enjoy. You also don't want to tell the players exactly how they will be scored but you do want to give them an idea of how they should be thinking in order to maximize their score.
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In my opinion, I think a tournament would function at it's best in a point driven formula, without a time limit. Arbitrary points (like rolling max damage) shouldn't factor in.
There should be a series of challenges, both skill based and combat based. Completing them should be worth points. Failing shouldn't earn you points, failing in a foolish way "attacking a diplomats guards" or some such should cost you points. If you're not good at something you can skip it. IE if you have no stealth character and you have to spy on something that requires you getting passed guards. Getting caught would be -1, ignoring it would be 0, and succeeding would be +1.
I played in the special at Gencon, we had a last minute recruited GM who had almost 0 prep-time, he performed valiantly, but had to double check some things, and we certainly lost out on some points because of it. Knowing what I do now, I could have easily caught the assassin had I known we could just run. We also lost a bit of time (after the encounter) because nobody was very clear on the chase rules.
I agree that time was the major failing of that tournament, and I think it would be great fun to run without that restriction.
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I agree that time was the major failing of that tournament, and I think it would be great fun to run without that restriction.
I agree on this. I ran RftRK at Unseelie Court at Tier 10-11. We never got to the last fight because of time, even though the players weren't doing badly. (They could've ran a little earlier than they did, but they mostly did fine.)
We'll be running RftRK at Origins in a couple weeks in a double slot, and I can't wait to see what happens at the higher level tables with all that time!
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Sure. Well let's talk about how my gf and I learned a lot from Gencon's Runecarved Key, leading her to overseer it later at Totalcon in an experience I consider to have been superior for the players involved overall compared to the Gencon version. Note that spoilers for the scenario abound here, so just stop reading if you don't want spoilers for Runecarved Key:
Spoiler:
Thank you. That's really cool.
It seems like the big thing is the time. So maybe in order to do a PFS tournament "properly" you need to split it up over multiple slots, so that one party can take time to do all the RP while another just cruises through it, and nobody's penalized.
Better standardization of scoring for various actions seems like a pretty important aspect too.
There can be some issues there as well--the people who finish early don't get as much game for their tickets, for one thing, and would have been unable to schedule something else for that second slot. I do agree that a time crunch makes matters worse, but I think Runecarved Key would still have been better as non-competitive even without the time crunch.
I happen to have also been in the 2011 Paizocon Grand Melee, which essentially didn't have a time limit, and our table was told we were vastly in the lead but that there was one table still playing; however, since winning in a low number of rounds was rewarded, it was expected we would still be on top. It was the last slot of the day, but eventually, the last table finished maybe two hours after everyone else was done, and they came in with the highest score. How is that possible? We had also been told that holding the center square was good to do, but what nobody realized is that holding the center square for one round was made valuable enough to cancel out all penalties for taking one round longer to fight. Given that things like rolling maximum weapon damage gave points (I guess the best character to have on your team would...
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...Sure. Well let's talk about how my gf and I learned a lot from Gencon's Runecarved Key, leading her to overseer it later at Totalcon in an experience I consider to have been superior for the players involved overall compared to the Gencon version. Note that spoilers for the scenario abound here, so just stop reading if you don't want spoilers for Runecarved Key:
Spoiler:
Thank you. That's really cool.
It seems like the big thing is the time. So maybe in order to do a PFS tournament "properly" you need to split it up over multiple slots, so that one party can take time to do all the RP while another just cruises through it, and nobody's penalized.
Better standardization of scoring for various actions seems like a pretty important aspect too.
There can be some issues there as well--the people who finish early don't get as much game for their tickets, for one thing, and would have been unable to schedule something else for that second slot. I do agree that a time crunch makes matters worse, but I think Runecarved Key would still have been better as non-competitive even without the time crunch.
I happen to have also been in the 2011 Paizocon Grand Melee, which essentially didn't have a time limit, and our table was told we were vastly in the lead but that there was one table still playing; however, since winning in a low number of rounds was rewarded, it was expected we would still be on top. It was the last slot of the day, but eventually, the last table finished maybe two hours after everyone else was done, and they came in with the highest score. How is that possible? We had also been told that holding the center square was good to do, but what nobody realized is that holding the center square for one round was made valuable enough to cancel out all penalties for taking one round longer to fight. Given that things like rolling maximum weapon damage gave points (I guess the best
Totally missed that and you're right on the money--whoops! I guess the other people I asked missed it too, or their GM missed it (I know I didn't see it before GMing, but it didn't matter for the table I ran because time was called before they got that far). I really wish this had also been listed in his "Other Gear" as well, and I'm still guessing that by the time you find that note, the decision has been made either by the dice gods or by the PCs without knowing about the note yet.
Given that I missed that, I did another thorough check of the rest of the document, and I'm confident that my other observations stand up and aren't the results of a failed Perception check like that one.
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A quick comment on just one topic I can speak to: The relative lack of level 1-2 scenarios does hurt. All of my PFS characters are at that level range, and it's hard to find games for them to get used in. Without said games, I can't get them to level 3+ to get into the bulk of scenarios.
Mind you, when I do play I'm having a great time; I've been fortunate that pretty much every GM I've played with in PFS so far has been competent at worst, and generally better than that.
Still, I find myself in a situation with fewer opportunities to play than most others and this hurts; if D&D Next can put on some pressure to improve this situation with more low-level adventures in PFS then I'm all for it.
To piggyback on Celestial Pegasus' post: PFS has excellent GMs from what I've seen. I feel like I'm a better GM for having played under one of those guys.
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Random thought: Speaking of time commitments, would more shorter scenarios/quests be of use to new players and organizers (maybe across multiple tiers)?
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Remember, RE the number of scenario levels 1-2 available, even if you theoretically have 5 scenarios left you can run they may not be the same 5 scenarios your group can run. Getting 5 geeks at the same place at the same time can be hard enough, running the same scenario makes it exponentially harder.
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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Random thought: Speaking of time commitments, would more shorter scenarios/quests be of use to new players and organizers (maybe across multiple tiers)?
Absolutely. Anything that can be used as a recruitment tool would be of use, and shorter scenarios are awesome for that.
As a general guideline on that concept, what were your numbers like for the Beginner Box Bash? I would think you should be able to duplicate this kind of thing on a regular basis if you were to do something along that line quarterly, or even every 6 months.
PS - Nice to see Lilith back. Where'd Liz go? (-:
As a veteran gamer of three and half decades I have seen the editions come and go with good things and bad things with those changes, and I played many Living Campaigns as well as home games.
Now what I am not is a person that follows all of the upheavals within the organizations, licensing, the political drama etc... don't care.
Bottom line is I am a paying customer/ gamer that wants products to enjoy. So as a customer please acknowledge that, as well as all the others that have paid their hard earned money into your company and please hear what is being requested of you. Specifically do not become complacent in what you have earned with your fan base, respect our wishes and invest in the future of the new players seeking a great gaming system (YOURS), and the exciting world of Society play by creating more entry level modules with enticing treasure, boons, etc to excite the new players and the veterans alike.
Thank you for your time.
Chief Technical Officer
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This is something we receive a good deal of feedback on. I'm curious what the best number of scenarios released each month is.Why do you guys need to ask us? You guys have the data to answer this question much more accurately than we do. That reporting data that you guys keep telling us to give you has everything you need. You know what we play, when we play, where we play, how often we play, which characters we play with, who we play with, and who our GMs are. And from the financial standpoint, you know what we buy, and you know what our coordinators, GMs, and tablemates buy.
Paizo is blessed with mountains of useful data through its online store and PFS reporting. The fact that you guys don't know the answer to the question of how many scenarios per month is ideal is evidence that you guys have yet to really dig through it. You have the big picture in your database, when all we have are a series of small ones.
You have everything you need to answer your own question more accurately than this board ever could.
We don't, actually. First of all, there's very little correlation between "buying" and "playing" in RPGs, and that's even more true of PFS. Sales data is almost completely irrelevant when it comes to answering Mike's question.
The best data we have, as far as answering that exact question goes, is just the number of sessions that people have reported. (And I'm sure you're already aware that play is underreported...) But that only gives us a minimum, not a maximum. Imagine this: We put a six-pack of Coke on your desk, and then we check at the end of the day to see how many cans you drank. Using that data to determine the number of Cokes you'd like to drink in a day only works if that number is 6 or less. If it's 7 or higher, the data tells us only that the answer is "at least 6."
Which is to say, if you're saying "we want more than you gave us," yeah, we actually do have to ask how many more.
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Chief Technical Officer
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But again, this is info Paizo can glean from their database: How many people are playing 24+ scenarios in a year? Anyone playing less than that isn't going to need more.
I'll tell you this: as of today, we've released 20 scenarios so far this season. The number of people who have reported playing 18 or more of those? 42.
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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Feedback on the forums is good, but it's probably strongly biased towards the more dedicated players and therefore likely to overstate the case for more scenarios
I have no way of pointing at my experience and qualifications and saying, "I think I know what I'm talking about," without reinforcing the fact that, in actuality, this is the internet, and I'm making a message board post.
Instead, I'll ask you to read over my post history. I hope that what you will find is a person who tends to look at the facts, is willing to listen to reason, and has backed down on as many arguments as he has stood up for. I believe that marks me as someone who, honestly, is willing to consider all sides. Like Paizo, I have my own computer systems that can measure internal data, with my own spreadsheets and the ability to analyze them.
Essentially, I'm saying that when I ask for more scenarios (and more PFS support in general) I'm not merely doing so because I'm a "hard core" player. I'm doing so because I think I know what I'm looking at.
How about I come at it another way:
If D&D Next OrgPlay comes along and knocks one out of the park with an awesome idea/system/story, and ends up swiping a third of the PFS players while creating thousands more, I'm going to reap the benefits of that. Why? Because those guys are going to be more than welcome at my store. I'm going to be revenue neutral, or even positive, as a result of any action a D&D Next OrgPlay system generates.
So, why am I making noise? Because I LIKE the PFS system and campaign, and I have a personal interest in it. As I mentioned, business-wise I think I know what I'm looking at, and I don't like the signs I'm seeing. I'm thinking that, given Paizo's history of listening to their customers, I may be able to change that.
Thus, I can only HOPE that Erik, Vic, et.al. will listen to me:
Three scenarios per month, please.
1 x tier 1-5
1 x tier 3-7
1 x tier 5-9 or 7-11 (alternating monthly)
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Venture-Lieutenant, West Virginia—Charleston
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But again, this is info Paizo can glean from their database: How many people are playing 24+ scenarios in a year? Anyone playing less than that isn't going to need more.I'll tell you this: as of today, we've released 20 scenarios so far this season. The number of people who have reported playing 18 or more of those? 42.
Alright, how many people have played all but the newest 1-5s? This season has a lower than usual selection of 1-5s, and as such, many players find it inaccessible.
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But again, this is info Paizo can glean from their database: How many people are playing 24+ scenarios in a year? Anyone playing less than that isn't going to need more.I'll tell you this: as of today, we've released 20 scenarios so far this season. The number of people who have reported playing 18 or more of those? 42.
That's not a telltale sign. It's only potentially indicative for people who have finished all other scenarios as well, which isn't the case for most players.
We're playing scenarios in other seasons as well, and that means we're still getting closer to the running-out point. It only takes groups that play once a week (albeit for a long time) to close that gap. Some players play twice a week, and a few (somehow!) manage to play more than that.
Not alone here. Your stats will have a better idea than I do but my guess is that PFS is growing, not stagnating, so this will be coming for more and more people.
You want to know how many scenarios you need to release per month, who do you want to cater to?
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First off I would like to say I think it is awesome how you guys chat with us on the forums and the means you do it is very well done as well.
I say see what Next does well, and steal their best ideas. Honestly you both steal from each other anyway, so just prepare for it. I would love to see the equivelant of a Lair Assualt for pathfinder. A mission so brutal few survive. So crank out a level X and send them to their doom.
You know Next is looking at PFS and will steal whatever your development team has developed to make thier game better.
Plus it is not like people that love PFS are going to suddenly stop playing PFS because next is so awesome. The investment people havve made in PFS is huge and to give that up for next would mean they are already unhappy.
For ALL styles of D&D it is not what style it is who you play with. If you have awesome GMs in PFS you will have awesome games in PFS. Simple as that.
Plus competition is good. Competition is great. It gives companies a reason to improve. Without it hubris would set in, and eventually wittle away the company. John Nash won a nobel prize for mathematically proving this idea.
being scared willy nilly style and saying ohh no Next will come an will wreck all PFS is just silly and encourages the even more silly faction wars. There is room for everything, and to enjoy everything.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Percent of people who have reported playing sessions in the past year that:
Average 1 or more session per month: 90%
Average 2 or more sessions per month: 39%
Average 3 or more sessions per month: 17%
Average 4 or more sessions per month: 6%
Average 5 or more sessions per month: 3%
Average 6 or more sessions per month: 1%
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Edit: This data is completely wrong. See this post for the real data.
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Chief Technical Officer
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OTOH, I'm not sure that number is the right one to look at.
I'm not saying it's *the* right number to look at; I'm just putting it out as a data point. It's *a* number to look at.
Some metric that ignores the last couple released might be better. Give people a month or so to catch up.
Right there with you. We released 20 scenarios during that time, and because the most recent two came out just a month ago, I looked for people who played at least 18.
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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Percent of people who have reported playing sessions in the past year that:
Average 1 or more session per month: 90%
Out of this group, what percentage is one game reported with one game played, total?
Meaning, how many can be split out due to having simply come along to give it a whirl, then stopped playing?
Average 2 or more sessions per month: 39%
What percentage of this group only does this because they know that, by doing this, they won't run out of options? Please realize I'm holding up my own hand, here.
I was in the process of typing a response that would let Netopolis know that the numbers you were about to post (if you did) would NOT support an argument for more, due to the fact that it's just raw data. You just beat me to the punch.
I wanted to offer the following way of looking at things:
Make a list of scenarios that are tier 1-5. Then make columns of all the players available in any given pool (for the sake of argument, we'll just go with ALL Society players). Then start putting an "x" in any box where a player has played a scenario. After that's all done, recruit a few players and start back at the beginning of the list. See how many tables those recruits will be able to join, reliably.
As you go further back, the number gets smaller and smaller. Now split the ALL Society players into geographic locations, and carry those percentages out.
It gets pretty tricky to put together tables that will bring the new recruits along and allow them to join the "2 games per month" club, much less make their way into those other numbers. I suspect that has as much impact on your averages as the "Tried it, but can't continue to play it" guy impacted your "1 game per month" group.
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Has anyone here tried Neverwinter (the mmo) and think that its an early attempt to get people have interested in the setting of FR (Im not even talking about the rules system as it is effectively not much at all to do with D&D ).
This promotional drive gives players who play through it lore on the setting and could be a method to get people interested enough to play any new version of a living Forgotten Realms campaign that arises. It would be nice to see some linkage with the future Pathfinder mmo and PFS (maybe some event crossover). I think the early efforts of Defiance ( mmo/ tv hybrid)show that cross media efforts can work.
Also Finlanderboy: This line should be quoted for all eternity.
For ALL styles of D&D it is not what style it is who you play with. If you have awesome GMs in PFS you will have awesome games in PFS. Simple as that.
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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I'll tell you right now, they're not going to double (or even bump by 50%) the number of scenarios they come out with a month for 42 people. That would be really bad business sense. You can't just cater to the handful of hardcore.
By the way, are we talking about doubling, or even adding 50% more scenarios to the schedule? I don't think we should be, nor do I think we are.
I'm proposing 3 scenarios per month. That's 36 scenarios.
In Season 3 (I won't look at Season 4, because I believe that Season's numbers and patterns helped exacerbate this problem), there were 28 scenarios. Counting First Steps, the GenCon special, and the Grand Convocation, there were 33. Taking out The Midnight Mauler, as it had been published the prior year, there were 32 NEWLY DEVELOPED scenarios for Season 3.
So, I'm talking about an increase of 4 scenarios, a 12.5% increase over what was the most easily managed season I have had to manage for my players, to date. That's it. I think that is very reasonable growth.
Season 4 has, instead, gone backwards. Season 5, if Mark's hints are accurate (and why would I assume they aren't) will be just as bad. Meanwhile, the player base is growing by leaps and bounds.
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Percent of people who have reported playing sessions in the past year that:
Average 1 or more session per month: 90%
Average 2 or more sessions per month: 39%
Average 3 or more sessions per month: 17%
Average 4 or more sessions per month: 6%
Average 5 or more sessions per month: 3%
Average 6 or more sessions per month: 1%
I love raw numbers. Thanks. I am polling the St. Louis group as we speak. I am wondering where people in St Louis stand in regards to this. My gut says we are in that top 10%.
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Venture-Lieutenant, West Virginia—Charleston
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Percent of people who have reported playing sessions in the past year that:
Average 1 or more session per month: 90%
Average 2 or more sessions per month: 39%
Average 3 or more sessions per month: 17%
Average 4 or more sessions per month: 6%
Average 5 or more sessions per month: 3%
Average 6 or more sessions per month: 1%
If this is true, then, it would take the average player 6 months (!) to reach level 5. In my opinion, this is a pretty strong argument for more lower-tier scenarios.
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Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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Drogon, I imagine that someone playing 4 scenarios per month would be counted in all four of the first categories.
Heh. Right. Not sure why I didn't spot that d-:
Percent of people who have reported playing sessions in the past year that:
Average 1 or more session per month: 90%
Average 2 or more sessions per month: 39%
Average 3 or more sessions per month: 17%
Average 4 or more sessions per month: 6%
Average 5 or more sessions per month: 3%
Average 6 or more sessions per month: 1%
So, breaking this out a little more:
Play 6 or more sessions per month: 1%
Play 5 sessions per month: 2%
Play 4 sessions per month: 3%
Play 3 sessions per month: 11%
Play 2 sessions per month: 22%
Play 1 session per month: 51%
Play less than one session per month (even zero): 10%
That feels about right (and looks significantly more correctly weighted without that big ol' 90% number next to the "1 time per month" line).
I'm still curious how many of the 1-Sessioners would be a 2-, if they could more reliably put together tables, and how many 2-Sessioners would bump into the higher frequency if there were more options for them.